4. Alec
ALEC
She'd put her hands on my chest in the dim water and told me she wanted to stay with me.
The locals were gone. The light was almost gone. The dog-day heat had finally broken, and a cool came off the river we hadn't felt all summer.
Tamra was right in front of me, both hands flat on my chest. Her hair was heavy and wet down her back, and I had one hand on her waist under the water. My other hand came up slowly and found her jaw.
"Don't say anything reasonable," she said.
"I wasn't going to."
"Good."
I kissed her.
Her mouth was cold from the water and warm underneath, and she made a sound against my lips that I felt all the way down through my chest. Her hands slid up from where they'd been pressed flat and went around the back of my neck.
She pulled me closer. I let her. The river moved against my legs and her body floated into mine in the fading light, and I caught her under the thighs and lifted her up against me. Her legs went around my waist like she'd been thinking about doing it for an hour.
"There she is," I said.
"Don't talk."
"I'm going to talk a little."
"Alec."
"Tamra. Tell me you want this."
"I want this."
"Tell me again."
"I want this. I want this. I want—Alec, please."
I kissed her again. Harder this time, because she'd said please.
Her hands went into my hair and her mouth opened under mine and she made another one of those sounds.
When she shivered against me, I didn't know if it was the cold water or me, but I told myself I'd find out before the night was over.
I walked us toward the shallow end.
She didn't notice at first. She had her face against my neck and her arms tight around me, and I waded backward through the pool with her legs around my waist until the water came down to my hips, and then to my thighs.
And then I was kneeling at the edge of the pool on smooth river rock with her in front of me, and the air hit her bare shoulders for the first time all night and she gasped.
"Cold," she said through clenched teeth.
"I know."
"Alec, I'm?—"
"I've got you."
I pulled the strap of her sundress down off her shoulder. Just one. I let it sit against her arm. I looked at her in the darkening skies—at her face, not anywhere else—and waited.
"Yes," she said.
"Say more than yes."
"Yes, take it off me."
I took it off her.
The sundress had soaked through and gone heavy, and I pulled it down over her hips and dropped it in a wet heap on the rock beside us.
Then she was bare in front of me in the last of the light, and my gaze was drawn to her pebbled nipples and her large but perky breasts.
The view of her was almost more than I could take, and I told myself I was going to be done before we started if I didn't get my mouth on her.
"There's something I have to tell you," she suddenly said, breaking the silence.
"What's that?"
"I've never?—"
"I know."
"How do you know?"
"I just know."
I kissed her before she could ask me how. My hand came up her back and spread between her shoulder blades and pulled her in against me, and her bare chest pressed against my bare chest. Her breath caught and held, but I remained still for a long count and let her get used to the feel of me.
I laid her back on the smooth rock at the edge of the pool. I made sure the rock was warm where I put her—the day's heat was still in it, and her wet skin steamed a little against the stone. She shivered again, and I pulled her against me and warmed her up.
I straightened up just long enough to shove my swim trunks down my thighs and kick them aside, then lowered myself back over her on the warm rock. The night air felt cool on my cock, already hard and aching for her.
I kissed her throat. I kissed her collarbone.
I kissed the place at the base of her sternum that I'd watched flush red four times in the last two days.
Then I felt her hands fist in my hair and her hips lift up off the rock toward mine, and I knew.
It was the same thing I'd known yesterday morning when I'd looked up from a coil of climbing rope.
She was the one.
I kissed my way down her body, slow and deliberate, tasting the river on her skin. She was trembling under my mouth by the time I reached her hips, and I slid lower onto my elbows between her thighs, my shoulders pressing her legs open against the rock.
Tamra's breath hitched when I leaned in.
I dragged my tongue up the center of her in one long, slow stroke, savoring the slick heat of her.
She tasted like river water and pure woman, sweet and musky, and the sound she made—half gasp, half moan—shot straight to my balls.
I did it again, firmer this time, circling her clit with the flat of my tongue before closing my lips around it and sucking gently.
"Alec—" Her hands flew into my hair, gripping tight.
I hummed against her and kept going, licking and sucking in a steady rhythm that had her hips rolling up to meet my mouth.
The light was almost gone, but I could feel everything.
The way her thighs started shaking against my ears, the way her clit swelled under my tongue, the fresh rush of wetness that coated my chin.
Her little gasps turned into desperate whimpers, then broken cries that echoed softly off the rocks around us. I slid one finger inside her, then two, curling them just right while I flicked my tongue faster over her clit.
She came with a sharp, shocked cry, her back arching hard off the rock, thighs clamping around my head. I kept licking her through it, drawing it out until she was panting and twitching, her fingers loosening in my hair like she'd forgotten how to hold on.
I rose up over her, bracing my weight on one forearm. My cock was throbbing, slick at the tip and so hard it hurt. I rubbed the head up and down her soaked folds, coating myself in her, and pressed forward.
She was tight. So fucking tight.
The first inch made her suck in a sharp breath. I felt her body resist, then give way slowly as I eased deeper.
"Breathe, baby," I murmured against her ear. "That's it. Just breathe."
It took everything I had not to thrust all the way in.
She was scorching hot inside, silky and pulsing around me, and every tiny shift of her hips made stars burst behind my eyes.
Halfway in, she whimpered—a sound that was equal parts pain and need.
I stilled, kissing her throat, her jaw, letting her adjust while my cock throbbed inside her.
"Too much?" I asked, voice rough.
She shook her head. "Don't stop. Please don't stop."
I rocked forward again, slow and careful, until I was buried to the hilt.
The feeling was unreal—her walls fluttering and squeezing around every inch of me, wet heat gripping so perfectly I had to clench my jaw to keep from coming right then.
I held still inside her, letting her body soften and open, feeling her relax by degrees until her hips started moving in tiny, seeking circles.
"That's my girl," I whispered. "Feel how deep I am? You're taking all of me."
She moaned softly, and the sound went straight through me.
I started to move—long, slow strokes that dragged against every sensitive place inside her.
The pain in her voice melted into pleasure, her breaths turning into soft, needy gasps every time I filled her completely.
The wet sound of our bodies meeting was obscene in the quiet night, mingled with her little cries and my own low groans.
"Touch yourself, Tamra," I told her, voice gravel-rough. "Right here." I took her hand and guided her fingers to her clit. "Slow circles. Just like that. Good girl."
She obeyed, her fingers moving shyly at first, then with more confidence as I kept thrusting into her.
The sight of her touching herself while I fucked her—even in the near-dark—was enough to make my balls draw up tight.
I could feel her getting close again, her pussy starting to flutter and clench around my cock in rhythmic pulses that made my vision blur.
Every stroke felt better than the last. She was so wet now, I could hear the slick slide of my cock moving in and out of her, could feel her arousal coating my thighs. Her free hand clutched at my back, nails digging in. Her moans grew higher, breathier.
"Come on, baby. Let me feel you come on my cock."
Her fingers sped up on her clit. I drove into her a little harder, grinding against her with every thrust. She shattered with a broken cry, her walls clamping down on me so tight I saw stars.
The rhythmic squeeze of her orgasm pulled me right over the edge with her. I buried myself deep and came hard, pulsing inside her in long, powerful spurts that left me groaning her name against her neck. The pleasure was blinding—hot, endless waves that emptied me completely.
We stayed locked together, panting, her body still fluttering around me as aftershocks rolled through me. I kissed her slow and deep, tasting her pleasure on my tongue, feeling her heart hammering against mine.
Finally, I pulled her into the water with me to wash off, and she laughed when the cold hit her again—a relaxed laugh, loose and stunned. I held her against me in the chest-deep water with her arms around my neck and her face buried under my jaw, and we floated like that for a long time.
"Alec? That was…"
"I know."
"I don't have words."
"That's all right."
"Is it always?—?"
"No."
"No?"
"No, Tamra."
She lifted her face from under my jaw and looked at me in the last of the light. I could just see her eyes.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay."
She pressed her face back into my neck. I held her.
The river moved. I figured out, holding her, that I was about ten minutes from being cold and about two minutes from her teeth chattering, and that the truck was up the bank with dry clothes in it and a blanket behind the seat.
My cabin was a fifteen-minute drive up the ridge with a bed in it and a shower and clean sheets and a hot mug of something for the woman in my arms.
"Tamra."
"Mmm."
"Let's get you out of the water."
"In a minute."
"Now."
"Alec."
"You're going to start shivering in about two minutes, and I'm not letting you shake apart in a river when there's a warm bed twenty minutes up the road."
She lifted her face again. I felt her smile against my neck before I felt it on her face.
"Twenty minutes."
"Twenty minutes."
"That's a long drive."
"That's a normal drive."
"Will you?—?"
"I'll do whatever you want. Come home with me, Tamra."
"Take me home."
I set her on her feet in the shallows long enough to wade back to the rock and pull my trunks on.
Her sundress lay in a wet heap where I'd dropped it.
I picked it up, wrung it out one-handed, and carried it back to her.
Then I scooped her up again, and she wrapped herself around me like she hadn't been set down.
I carried her up the bank. Her sundress was wet over my arm and her legs were locked around my waist and her face was tucked under my jaw. I wasn't sure if I was holding her up or she was holding me up.
I put her in the passenger seat of my truck. Pulled the blanket out from behind the seat. Wrapped it around her shoulders.
I drove her up the ridge with one hand on the wheel and the other on her thigh under the blanket. She didn't say anything the whole way. She didn't need to.
I put her in my bed.
I'd think about that for the rest of my life. The way she sat down on the edge of it with the blanket around her shoulders and looked up at me like she was waiting to be told what came next.
"Tamra, I'll be right here," I said.
She lay down, and I lay down behind her, and she fell asleep against me inside of four minutes. I stayed awake for a long time after that and listened to her breathe.